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Take Control of Safari 6

Become a Web-browsing wizard by learning all that Safari can do for you.

Sure, nearly anyone can get around well enough on the Web in Safari. But Apple has been improving Safari for years, and it has a treasure trove of features that most people never notice. No one ferrets out those features—and their shortcuts—better than Sharon Zardetto. She wrote this ebook to help you use Safari faster, smarter, and better than ever before.

You’ll start your advanced Safari education by customizing your environment, especially its toolbar, bookmarks, and top sites. Then you’ll explore key browsing techniques, including how to access sites you’ve visited in the past quickly, load multiple Web pages at once, and sync open tabs among your Apple devices. You’ll also find advice on how to go beyond the basics for searching both the Web in general and any page you’re viewing, fill out forms, automatically, manage stored passwords, keep pages around to read later, and discover the most worthwhile extensions that expand Safari’s feature set.

What about compatibility? Safari 6 runs in 10.7 Lion and 10.8 Mountain Lion, but its feature set is slightly restricted in Lion, and Sharon points out the differences. For 10.6 Snow Leopard or 10.5 Leopard, read Take Control of Safari 5.

More Info

Specifically, you’ll learn how to:

Load any link into a new tab or window, or into your Reading List.

Organize your enormous bookmark collection.

Unearth a page in your history, even it’s not bookmarked or in your Reading List.

Read a multi-page, ad-ridden article in a reader-friendly layout.

Prevent snoops from tracking where you’ve been on the Web.

Update a password that Safari has stored.

Learn how to make Safari fill in most forms for you.

Expand too-small text fields for easier typing and editing.

Add pages to your Reading List for later perusal, whether online or offline, and even on a separate device.

Block ads, zoom images, show passwords as you type, and more with helpful Safari extensions.

What's New

What’s New in This Edition

This ebook is effectively the third edition of an ebook that I’ve been writing about Safari, beginning with Safari 4, continuing with Safari 5, and now focusing on Safari 6.

Out with the old, in with the new! That about sums it up. I’ve deleted obsolete material (RIP, RSS!) and added coverage about new features in Safari (see What’s New in Safari 6). In addition, I’ve tweaked some general information that’s system-specific, since we’re two systems (10.7 Lion and 10.8 Mountain Lion) beyond what was current for the last edition of this book. So for instance, using the new-in-Lion Mission Control/Application Windows (Switch Windows) and full-screen mode (Hide Windows with Full-Screen Mode) to control Safari window clutter get their due. Also, the concept of mailing Web links or pages, and how Safari coordinates with Apple Mail isn’t new, but there is a new way to access the options as well as new ways to format the information you send, as described in Email Links or Page Content.

Some things are new to this edition that aren’t new to Safari 6 because of the leapfrogging nature of app updates and book updates:

The Reading List, which was added to Safari 5.1, is new to this book because it came out after the Safari 5 edition did. (But the feature was considerably updated for Safari 6, so make sure you read all about it, in Work with the Reading List.)

Now that extensions are not the Brand New Thing, it’s easier to poll experts about the ones they recommend, which is just what I did, and I’ve added the list for your convenience. I put special notices, like the one below, throughout the book wherever I discuss a feature (or lack thereof) that a specific extension addresses, linking it to the fuller description in Recommended Extensions, where you’ll find links to downloadable versions.

What’s New in Safari 6

Safari 6, released with OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, is another step in the evolution of Apple’s browser. No, it’s not revolutionary by any means, but there are convenient, welcome improvements. In this chapter, I first list what’s new in Safari 6, and then I note which of the new features you won’t find if you’re still running 10.7 Lion.

Here are the new features in Safari 6, and where they’re explained:

The former “smart address field” is now exceptionally clever, and works as a combined address and search field, as described in Use the Address Field to Load a Page.

The Tab View lets you peruse all of a window’s open tabs without having to move from tab to tab.

Work with the Reading List to read Web pages offline.

Share from the Share Button to put email, messaging, tweeting, and more at your fingertips.

When more Web sites get up to speed with this HTML5 feature, you’ll be able to Handle Web-Page Notifications.

Use iCloud Tabs to pick up where you left off on another computer or device with the syncing of left-open tabs.

There’s a new Safari preference pane that lets you Store and Edit Your Passwords.

What’s Not New in Safari 6 in Lion

The version of Safari 6 that’s available for 10.7 Lion is missing some features that are in the Mountain Lion version (most are dependent on Mountain Lion features):

Notifications.

iCloud Tabs: These are a special syncing convenience that lets you see what tabs you left open on one computer or mobile device when you’re using one of your other ones.

Tab View.

Share button: The soon-to-be (if not already) ubiquitous Share button came to Mountain Lion from iOS. It’s not available in Lion, but some of its commands (it sports a drop-down menu) are available elsewhere. Not, however, the Message, Twitter, and Facebook commands, since those connect to Mountain Lion’s innards.

FAQ

What version of Mac OS X do I need to run Safari 6?

Safari 6 runs in 10.7 Lion and 10.8 Mountain Lion, but its feature set is slightly restricted in Lion, and Sharon points out the differences. For 10.6 Snow Leopard or 10.5 Leopard, read Take Control of Safari 5. There’s also Take Control of Safari 4 for people running 10.4 Tiger.

My entire mess was due to the fact that I had not bothered to learn how to open new tabs where I wanted them, how to move tabs between windows, and how to move between tabs. Even my bookmarks were a mess… Sharon has obviously put a great deal of time into making the best use of Safari’s tab and/or window features. The description of the various options is clear and often in a table form, so different approaches are
obvious at a glance. All I had to do was read a few pages of the book and I had a positive feeling that at last I understood this concept. —Pam

Update Plans

October 10, 2012 – We don’t have any immediate plans to update this ebook.

In MacVoices episode 12121 author Sharon Zardetto chats with host Chuck Joiner about whether people now-a-days “surf” or “browse” the Web. They also shoot the breeze about why Sharon was missing RSS in Safari 6 and what she did about it, what’s new and worth paying attention to in Safari 6, and a few interesting Safari extensions.

Sharon Zardetto has been writing about the Macintosh professionally since 1984, including nearly a thousand articles in Macintosh magazines and over 20 books. She’s best known for writing several editions of The Macintosh Bible, along with The Mac Almanac.

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